"Dear Vanity,--It was very kind and nice of you to have noticed us in your paper, but, if I may make an observation, I should like to have had the rose without the thorn. The article is likely to make the public think that Captain Burton is living on the fat of the land at public expense, and doing nothing to earn it. I do not want any one to put the 'evil eye' upon the poor hard-earned little £600 a year--_well_ earned by forty years' hard toil in the public service. It is true that Government has sometimes, but not often, spared him for a few months at a time to do larger works, which have been for more general public benefit and wider extended good; but all the journeys quoted in _Vanity_ have been undertaken _between_ his various posts, when he has been out of employment, or during the usually _allowed_ leave that _other men_ spend in Pall Mall. On all the occasions when he has had 'leave' as above, he has gone _voluntarily_ on half-pay those few months. If any one grudges us our pittance, and will inquire in Africa, Brazil, Damascus, or Trieste, they will find that at no time, of those or any other months, has a single detail of Consular work been omitted, or neglected, or performed by incompetent or ordinary subordinates, whilst every penny of public money was nervously accounted for. They will learn that we have ever given double of what we have received; that every one of our four Consulates has been a credit to the Government; that the English of our district have always been proud of their Consul and Consulate; that foreigners are always on most friendly terms with them, and the authorities intimately so. If this be so, will not what you call an 'Amateur Consul' do quite as well as the other sort, whatever that may be? You are, however, my dear Vanity, mistaken on another point. The higher the post and the more important the duties, the greater is the ambition to discharge them nobly. How much more keenly would one feel as an Eastern diplomat, for instance, than settling a dispute between the cook and the mate of a merchant vessel, or signing passports? Your 'Series' writer must have dipped his pen in vinegar and gall when he wrote about the 'much-prized posts.' "I am, my dear Vanity, yours obediently, "ISABEL BURTON. "Hôtel Klinger, Maríenbad, Bohemia, "September 1st, 1882."